Manipulating NH: Bloomberg and the terrorist

If you were surprised at the anger displayed during Tuesday’s anti-gun rally in Concord, don’t be. It was deliberate.

The rally was part of a national bus tour organized by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun organization. A Guardian newspaper story about the tour reported its purpose this way: “The organisers of the bus tour hope it will sustain the public anger that surged after the killing of so many small children in Newtown, and maintain pressure on the opposing senators ahead of a possible second vote on the issue.”

People of New Hampshire, you are pawns in a national anti-gun campaign. The millions of dollars in TV ads, the Astroturf letters to the editor, the busing in of Newtown parents, all of it is a massive campaign of emotional manipulation.

In Concord, instead of making a reasoned case for restricting Second Amendment rights, the anti-gun zealots read the names of people they claimed were victims of gun violence. One of the names was Tammerlan Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. This is how stupid they think Granite Staters are.

Nothing better illustrates the anti-gun lobby’s contempt for common sense than the inclusion of Tsarnaev’s name in a supposed list of gun violence victims. On Wednesday Mayors Against Illegal Guns apologized for including Tsarnaev and said it got the list from Slate.com. So yet again it used questionable data it didn’t bother to check to promote its agenda. How nice.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns wanted to make Granite Staters angry, and it did. Only the anger was directed not at U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, but at the out-of-staters who came here — again — to manipulate us. It was anger well earned.

The people of New Hampshire have had enough, Bloomberg. We get it. You think the Second Amendment is an anachronism and that the right to bear arms must be infringed. We disagree. TV ads and bus tours are not going to change our minds. So please, leave us alone and take your agitation elsewhere. We have had enough of it.